


Be He So Worthy

by hermione_vader



Category: Spartacus Series (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 22:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4895296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermione_vader/pseuds/hermione_vader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU.  Thor fell to Earth once again and ended up a gladiator in Batiatus' ludus.  He has remained loyal to Spartacus thus far, but can this strange man who talks of realms and World Trees and hammers truly be trusted?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be He So Worthy

Though the hour is late, Spartacus cannot sleep. All he can think of are numbers of people swarming throughout the encampment. Too many to move much more now, too many to hide in a temple beneath a mountain. He has many thoughts and no one to speak them to. He could tell Agron, but he’d prefer his friend spend the night in Nasir’s arm. Such comforts should always be embraced, for they may be short-lived. Spartacus knows that all too well. At this moment, he longs for Varro’s company, but wishing would not bring his dearest friend back. So he considers the Asgardian, Thor.

Thor is a good man, loyal and brave and stronger than the rest. He has always proven himself true, but something always stops Spartacus from holding the man closer in his confidence. Perhaps it is that no one has heard of this land, Asgard, from which he claims to hail. Maybe it is the way Thor always tries to explain his homeland by describing a World Tree of interconnected realms, which always sparks an argument as all of their companions try to claim that their homelands must lie in Nifelheim or Svartalfheim or Vanaheim or one of the other realms, even though Thor claims the realms don’t work that way. 

Perhaps it is simply the fact that Thor claims he is a prince—a man born to immense privilege, the sort of man Spartacus can’t help but consider suspicious. What if Spartacus and their other companions were just pawns to Thor, something to trade to the Romans in return for the sorts of honors and riches a man of his birth was used to?

Just as Spartacus considers all of this, an odd sound booms in the distance outside his tent. The whole earth shakes in the wake of the sound. There are no gods—that he knows. But if there were, perhaps this would have been some sort of sign. 

Suddenly, Crixus storms into his tented, eyes wild. But when weren’t Crixus’s eyes wild in recent days?

“Spartacus, did you see the flash?” he asks. 

“No. But I heard errant noise and felt trembling ground.”

Crixus’s eyes are bright with worry, Spartacus realizes. “Something fell. Fell from the fucking heavens right into the middle of camp.”

“Then take Gannicus and investigate,” Spartacus tells him. As he spoke, his eyes felt heavy. “I will join you presently.”

Crixus nods and takes his leave.

But Spartacus never joins his companions. As soon as Crixus exits the tent, Spartacus falls into a deep sleep, filled with a voice chanting a phrase of which he only hears snatches: “Whoever holds…if he be…shall possess…Thor…the hammer…power…whoever…he be…Thor”

*

“Fuck the gods, why are you still abed?”

Agron’s voice draws Spartacus from his slumber.

“Because sleep called me to her quarters and favored me so that she would not release me until you called,” Spartacus answers, lying on his stomach.

“Tell sleep she can claim other men and come see this fucking thing!”

“What is it?” Spartacus sits up and straps his sandles on.

“Just come to the center of camp and you’ll see.” 

With that, Agron leaves.

*

At the center of camp stand many of his new people, gathered in a circle around something Spartacus cannot quite see. He pushes his way through the crowd until he reached the middle, where Agron, Crixus, Naevia, and Gannicus stood holding people back as the crowd reaches their arms out. A large hammer sits on a chunk of rock behind them.

“WHAT IS THIS?” Spartacus bellows. The crowd falls silent. Then a few voices shout: “Reach for it!” “Pull it!” “Lift it, you fuck!”

“Perhaps the Bringer of Fucking Rain would finally like his try,” Agron says, clearly annoyed. “Go on, pull it.”

Spartacus steps toward the hammer. When he reaches it, he wraps his fingers around the hammer and pulls. It lurches in his grip, moving slowly out of the rock. As he lifts the hammer, he hears the dream-voice chanting in his head again: be worthy…possess the power…shall possess…

The hammer takes all of his strength to wield. Its weight pulls him downward, causing him to wobble, but Spartacus refuses to fall. He raises the hammer slowly, until something jerks his arms up quickly and he raises the hammer above his head, where it shoots out a bolt of lightning that rises straight into the sky. Then his arms fall to his sides, the hammer still held in his right hand. Everyone stares at him, and not in an admiring way

“That happened, yes? Otherwise wine has addled my mind far more than it usually does,” Gannicus says, breaking the silence.

“You’re the first fool to lift that thing all fucking morning,” Agron says, his face full of disbelief.

“Why you? Why not the rest of us?” Crixus growls.

For the first time in many months, Spartacus has no words. He cannot tell them of the dream. The words refuse to reach his mouth.

“He is worthy!” a familiar voice shouts from the back of the crowd. Thor makes his way through the crowd, smiling all the while.

“Worthy? Worthy of what?” Naevia asks.

“Congratulations, my friend. I’d hoped it would be you, if it could not be me,” Thor tells Spartacus, clapping him on the shoulder. Then his gaze falls on the hammer. “May I?”

Thor takes the hammer from Spartacus and slips the cord on the end around his wrist. Then he spins it several times until he flies away, zooming up into the clouds, where more lightning flashed. Then he comes back down, laughing as he does so.

“The gods should piss themselves with worry,” Agron murmured.

“So should we all,” Gannicus added.

Spartacus walks over to where Thor has landed. “This is your hammer, Mjolnir?” He remembers the name from Thor’s stories, but never before has he believed any of those tales to be true.

“The very same. Only the worthy may wield it.” Thor’s smile appears sad now.

“Why him? What makes Spartacus so much more worthy than the rest of us?” Crixus asks.

“Crixus is just as worthy as Spartacus, yet he could not lift it,” Naevia says.

“And what makes Crixus worthy: his pride or his envy?” Thor replies.

Crixus and Naevia do not answer.

“You wanted to make Rome tremble, my friend,” Thor says, giving Spartacus’s arm a squeeze. “But you are meant for so much more.”

Spartacus embraces Thor, partly out of friendship and partly out of fear. This may be too much power for two men to wield. Yet he will do it. He must do it. 

Whatever else the hammer means, it means Thor can be trusted. And Spartacus feels glad to move forward knowing that.


End file.
